Manjiri Indurkar writes: The abbreviated pauses between grieving and living again

I think of putting on some calming music on my phone that will help me sleep. It’s the loop that this music creates that the mind slips into with ease. There are no peaks and crests, there’s a quiet lulling the notes offer, so serene you wouldn’t be able to tell one from another. But I can’t today. The slightest change in chords makes me aware of their existence. It’s a failed attempt.

I think of the phone call I had yesterday and I think of its implications for my life. What defines loss, and how does one mourn it? Aai would say it is different for different people. When Baba died, she had no time for mourning. She had to take care of me. When Baba died, I had no time to mourn, either. I had to take care of Aai. I had to write exams, excel in them, get a job and make sure Aai didn’t go the way Baba did. In some ways, saving Aai’s life became an act of mourning. But the pain dulled in time.

When Roland Barthes said, “I am either lacerated or ill at ease and occasionally subject to gusts of life”, it made sense to us. These gusts of life then kept getting bigger and bigger. And eventually, life took over.

But I am unsure what this loss means to Arun. I am unsure if he is asleep and dreaming or just pretending to lie still. I am unsure if he knows about the loss he has suffered and unsure what this loss means to him and unsure if this is why he has given up on speech and movement and maybe, life. My husband who should have been out on his morning walks, should have been taking the sick neighbour to the doctor despite government-issued health warnings, should have been watering his plants and talking to them like they were his children; he hasn’t said a word in 23 hours.

Buddhist teachings talk about suffering. “Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.” What though is the nature of his suffering? He lost a friend, the loss has come at a cost. What would alleviate his suffering? Would he feel better if he were able to attend the funeral?

Kavi Grace writes of longing, of loss, of alienation:

Bhaya ithle sampat nahi, maj tujhi athavan yete,
Mi sandhyakali gato, tu mala shikvali geet

My fears are endless, and I can’t stop remembering you, he says. In this evening of loneliness and isolation, I am singing the songs that you taught me. Arun once had come home from work and read to me this poem that Anthony had introduced him to. Is that what Arun is doing? Singing the songs Anthony taught him and not sharing the music with me?

Or is Arun, like Barthes, wondering, “Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought…?” I am unsure.

It’s now almost five. My neighbour has finished cleaning the porch, she must have washed and hung clothes to dry. If I step out of my house, I will smell the scent of freshly ground coffee wafting through the morning air from her kitchen. In a city where most people are tea drinkers, the aroma of coffee stands out. But I am not out yet. I am still lying in bed, next to my husband, who’s surrendered to grief. And I am figuring out my role in it.

There have been seasons of silence in our house. But none like this. When I found out about Anthony’s death, something told me Arun already knew. In our marriage of 36 years, we have experienced many devastations. We have lost parents. We have lost pets. We even lost a child. A stillborn who was alive inside my womb but stopped breathing the second he was pushed out of the land we called home.

The mourning of that unknown child was hard. We donated the clothes I had knit. We repainted the walls of our house. We filled our lives with more books and art. We started watching more films and began walking to unfamiliar corners of the city. Arun took up gardening, I brought home stray cats. We both became nurturing, the kind of nurturing our stillborn never got to experience. We decided to not fill the void with another child. We decided to keep living. Are we still mourning that loss? I don’t know. But Anthony’s loss is new.

I never quite understood Arun’s relationship with Anthony. They became friends in college. They worked in the same office. They talked about raising their kids together to be best friends. But when Arun got left behind, Anthony gave up on that dream. There were plans to build a home together where both families could retire. But Seema, Anthony’s wife, wasn’t too keen. She was living more and more away from Anthony. She would often be with her sisters in Mangalore.
When I asked her why, she’d say she liked living by the sea. She wanted Anthony to move too, but Anthony said he’d be bored there. His skin allergies act up in humid environments. He isn’t a fan of seafood and despises the fishy smell that haunts the air. He doesn’t have friends there. He built this house so he could live here and die here, why would he move? There were always reasons. Seema said he wouldn’t leave Arun, that’s all there is to this marriage. And I laughed. Now that Anthony is gone, I am wondering if she was right. Was that all there was to this marriage too?
It’s 5.30 am. I am up. I have to teach a class at 8 am to half-asleep students who would rather be sleeping than be talking about literature.

But I should get up and clean my work desk, make some tea. Today, we are discussing Madness and Civilisation in class. Maybe I should invite my students to my house to see what happens when madness and civilisation collide. But who is mad and who isn’t? Is the man who has gone silent on the world but perhaps is in conversation with those who matter to him mad or is the one who chooses to continue with the daily chores of life as if nothing has changed mad? Was Majnun the mad one, or those who threw stones at him the mad ones? Is Arun who is lying on the bed without movement, without language, the mad one or am I the one who in the face of this conflict still thinking of making chai and getting on with the day?

Manjiri Indurkar is a writer, editor, and poet from Jabalpur. She is the author of It’s All in Your Head, M, and Origami Aai